You will notice a hole in our blog, Joe is writing our Yellowstone Park entry from Wednesday tomorrow morning, he is a little worn out this evening and needs plenty of time to come up with his nature adjectives. I will soldier on for you, the loyal reader and talk about our day in Jackson Wyoming and Boise Idaho yesterday.

Joe and I both agree that the best dreams from childhood were those where you would randomly take off in flight. Yesterday we got to experience a taste of that through paragliding. After becoming student pilots (be sure to watch our video on this), and signing our lives away on the scariest rider I've ever signed, including a line that read "paragliding is dangerous and we cannot list each horrific event that could occur" we all piled into a van and braved the steep drive up a mountain, about 10,000 feet. Each of us had our own pilot with his or her own gear. The pilot picks a spot on the cliff and starts to set up a parachute, throws us a helmet, straps on a harness and we are ready to go

. The only instruction is to run off the cliff when your pilot says “1,2,3 go” and not to stop running until your pilot says so. Joe was one of the first ones to launch, I watched him sail easily off the cliff. As I stood there reciting as many “Hail Mary’s” as I could, I soon realized that I was the last one standing on the cliff. Raoul, my pilot, likes to be last. Take off was hysterical and the experience was fantastic. When we were heading towards the ground he asked if I wanted to do loops and he sent us diving into corkscrew turns. Joe claims he could hear me screaming from the ground. If this was so, it was delight, not terror.

After quite an exciting morning we headed out to Boise Idaho. We had lunch at Teton Thai, Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart’s favorite place in Wyoming. I didn’t realize that Calista ate, but when she does consume calories she knows how to make them count. Joe then spotted an old time soda fountain that has been open for 60 years containing all of the original machinery. We shared a huckleberry milk shake and were on our way!

Our next stop was Craters of the Moon National Park. I think I was pretty patient as we drove through and hiked up big lava rocks that looked like big piles of mud. The park as a whole reminded the both of us of Animal Kingdom at Disney World. It’s one of the newest national parks, but not the most exciting. Joe tried to help me imagine the lava flowing, but it was…not my favorite stop.

Idaho was majorly shifty. Highlights include the creepy gas station in Arco Idaho with a demonic looking child cradling a drippy ice cream sandwich in one hand and a soda in the other hand saying to Joe “My poppy gives me 5 dollars a day and I can spend it however I like.” A lot of nuclear testing goes on in Idaho

. We kept seeing signs for companies with initials only like IFN with the slogan “technology preventing American injury.” Huh? We kept expecting Dick Cheney to pop out behind a bush and “accidentily” shoot us in the face.

We pulled into our hotel in Boise and immediately rushed out to catch a late night showing of “Harry Pottter.” We had mixed feelings about the latest installment but it was fun to see a movie in a different city. The pre-movie entertainment had a certain homespun feel complete with jokes. Here’s one of Joe’s new favorites. What type of mosquito lives in the north pole? Cold ones…